


I Couldn't Hide From the Thunder in a Sky Full of Song

by Shyspyder



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: Angst, I had a literal stoke trying to type in these character names you guys, Motherhood, they're in the algorithm now though so you're fucking welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 20:10:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shyspyder/pseuds/Shyspyder
Summary: Some of Aisling's thoughts throughout her pregnancy, birth, and watching her son grow up from a distance.





	I Couldn't Hide From the Thunder in a Sky Full of Song

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t believe a show about faeries (of all things!) broke my fic-writing dry spell, but I finished the whole thing in like two days and have some serious thoughts, including lots of feelings about Aisling Querelle's character. Ngl tho I had like four tabs from the wiki open up because the names are just...they're a lot. I also wrote most of this while listening to Florence and the Machine cuze she’s a goddamn poet, so there's your title. May or may not write a follow-up to this, I’ll probably get too depressed so maybe not. Anyway enjoy!!

It was early the next morning when Aisling Querelle returned to her shabby apartment. A dog barked in the distance, signaling an early start to the day. A cool breeze drifted through the air, but she made no attempt to pull her cloak any closer. She couldn't seem to feel the cold. She didn’t feel much of anything, really. Only the words of Simon Spurnrose echoing in her ear.

“It’s better to leave in the early hours of the morning,” he said offering her a tea. She refused. “Just as the sun’s rising and the world’s too tired to care. That’s when things would be the least suspicious.”

Suspicious.

She was never one to use words to define her life. She was a songstress, yes, but the words were only ever just that. Lyrics meant to match the melody, to move an audience whichever way they find it does. But “suspicious” seemed to be the word that was sticking with her. Day in, day out. Suspicious, when her bleeding came late. Suspicious, when she searched for whispers in the row. Suspicious, when no one even questioned why she searched so desperately. Doctor Morange was the name that came up most often. She knew the basics, of course. Everyone did. He did things that other doctors would not. Abortions, for a start. But she needed more that just “what other doctors would not.” She needed someone who went a step further, and for more than just a little extra cash.

But the whispers weren’t ever that low. Not until the very _very_ early hours of the morning.

She saw him three days after she found out. Her heart was thudding the entire time, and her feet were always only a step away from the door. But Morange was always kind. He never asked too many questions, nor did he take her money. Instead, he offered two names of his own. Simon Spurnrose was one of them. The other, a headmaster of an orphanage, though he preferred to keep his anonymity. It all slipped into place too easily. It was never supposed to be easy. But it was the perfect solution. The only chance for her child to have any sort of life. Wings snipped off, cast to live as a Burgishman in a Burgish orphanage wearing Burgish clothes and learning Burgish values. So distant from her--their--homeland. But he would be alive.

She kept those thoughts on her mind each day she spent in her seclusion, only retreating from the public eye when it became too obvious to hide. Even then she could already feel the popularity of her songs fading away. There was no point making up excuses to anyone other than her friends and landlord.

Simon sent a carriage to pick her up when she was five months in. Her wings were carefully concealed beneath her blouse and the windows were boarded up, just to be safe. The driver took the short way out of the Row, and the long way around to the Spurnrose residence. She knew that the route must have been planned far in advance, just in case they had any followers.

Just in case they were suspicious.

She shivered, and looked out the window. The rumbling of the ground was making her stomach ill. Instead, she looked down at the trembling hands in her lap. 

Mr. Spurnrose was wealthy and elite, and benefitted from all the trappings that came with being in that position. She knew all this before she even agreed, but to see it for herself? Well, that was something else entirely. She swallowed and shifted her neck, feeling her wings rub against the back of her blouse. This far along, her belly had swollen too large for her to wear a corset. She didn’t take the driver’s hand when he offered to help her down. Instead, she cast her eyes across the front lawn. Could it be possible for something to both remind her of, yet be so incredibly different from her homeland? The grass smelled the same. Fresh, mixed with the scent of flowers. But it was well-tended to. Far too well-tended to. Fae and human alike were amongst the servants doing the tending, but she would have been blind not to notice that some were greater than the other. Mr. Spurnrose was willing to help her when few others would--but she was reminded that even he would ever go so far.

* * *

The remaining months passed quickly by. She had fooled herself into thinking that the time away would have given her a chance to reflect. Like there was a part of her that wanted to keep her child, and throw this plan in the gutter. But she couldn’t afford to think of such things, and she knew it. The only thing she could do was wallow.

The rest of the household did their best, and she couldn't fault them for that. She shared a table with both Simon and his wife Alise. They kept her up to date on news, culture, politics...Have you heard the news from Anoun? The fighting has gotten worse. Have you heard about this young new leader of the Commonwealth party? They say he wants to do something about it. Not once did she give them an inkling. Her face remained passive at the table, and when she returned to her room, she would let her tears and heartbreak flow into her freshly-changed sheets. She let them think it was the child kicking at her belly, or the grief for her mistake. Maybe even both.

Not once did they ask who the father was. 

Meanwhile, Afissa was always kind, but Aisling could see the pity in her eyes too. As the months stretched out, she found that she couldn’t look directly into any of their eyes. As the child grew in her belly, the shame grew in her chest.

Her mother had warned her about this once, as most mothers do. But she was starting to believe that nothing could have prepared her for this pain. Afissa had assured her that this was normal. That her child's half-blood had nothing to do with it. But Aisling was no fool. During her search for whispers, she had heard more than just the names of doctors. She had heard stories of half-bloods who had been born twisted, deformed. Babies who had never lived to see a breath. The thought both terrified her and relieved her. Perhaps her child would never have to suffer. Perhaps none of this would matter anyway.

But he was her son. She could feel him kicking, late at night when she struggled to sleep. She could feel his desperation, his longing for a breath of air. And every time he did, she felt a surge of dedication. Her son would have the life she never could. The one he deserved.

She never did get to name him. That was the part that bothered her most, the part that haunted her dreams and twisted into nightmares. She didn’t have time, between when he was ripped from her arms and shoveled over to the headmaster. Even if she did, she knew she couldn’t afford to. If she named him, then all of this would have been real. That would have been her son, and she would have been a faded songstress retreating back to a life of forgotten servitude. It was already bad enough that she recognized him as her son. Bad enough that she would watch him grow from a distance, playing with the other children. If she had given him a name--a Tirnanoc name--her strength would break.

Doctor Morange never should have given her the name of the orphanage where he was being sent. She cried for days after she asked. But the fever was still on her brow when the questions slipped from her lips, eyes half-closed and grief shaking her body. She saw how he turned around, face lined with sadness. He gave her the answer, and she slipped back into a silent, restless sleep. Her songs were slipping from favor, but she wrote her son a song nonetheless. It was becoming clear to her that she couldn’t just retreat back into her life as if none of this had ever happened.

Her heart was ripped in two when she first sang the song in public. One half of her wanted the song to fade into obscurity, leaving it’s importance for her and her alone. The other wanted it to grow, to grow so fast and so far that Absalom would hear it and just _know_. But for better or for worse, her gods favored the former. Her love was gone now, on the other side of the city. It might has well have been on the other side of the world. The only thing she had left of him had no knowledge of her.

* * *

Little Philo grew. Aisling watched, of course. It was all she could do but watch. She could see how lost her son became. She could see it in the tear tracks on his face when the others teased him. How she wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms and remind him that none of what they said mattered. She could see again, it in the questions he asked the headmaster, the way he looked at the scars on his back in the mirror, eyebrows knitted in confusion.

She wept for him, and sang to him when they were both supposed to be asleep.

Things were growing restless in her homeland. She knew, because things were growing restless in Carnival Row. The Pact was growing stronger in Tirnanoc, and more and more fae were fleeing to The Burge to escape the war. It was becoming increasingly difficult to exist anywhere else other than the Row. The Burgish no longer nodded politely to her in the streets, on the rare days she would be booked for a performance in a Burgish tavern. Smiles were replaced with disdain, eyes flitted across her face as if she wasn’t even there. It was in times like those in which she was reminded of why she had done what she done. Philo would always have to wonder if his secret would be discovered, but he would never be turned away. Not while he still passed as a Burgishman.

That was how she kept peace at night, and how she woke the next day.

That is, until the worst scenario had come to pass.

Whether it was longing for a homeland he never knew, or desperation to make something of himself...Aisling wished she could ask him. But Philo joined the war efforts despite her desperate prayers. It was not the first time she had almost broken her promise to herself and gone to see him. She had thought to reveal herself plenty of times before, but never had the urge been so strong. This may very well be the last chance she would ever have to see her son again. Instead, she watched his face from a distance, memorizing each line. He smiled to his friends, joking about things she couldn’t hear. He was growing closer too. She turned her face, preparing to leave.

But it was too late. She looked up, and his eyes were turned towards her own. The first thought that crossed her mind was Absalom. He always had that same look in his eye, the strange sort of energy. The was frozen in place. His jaw was the same shape too, though it took a moment to notice it. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not leave her. She was too busy searching his face for other familiar things. The shape of his eyes, hers. The dimples in his cheeks, his. The color of his hair, hers…

“Can I help you?” He asked. She realized, then, that she was in his way. She also realized that his tone was ever-polite, not even the slightest hint of annoyance or even the possibility that she had ever done anything wrong. It was a genuine question. But she couldn’t tear her eyes from his face. This was the first time she had ever looked into his eyes, and they into hers. She searched desperately for a sign of recognition, a hope that he would look back and see her too. But there was nothing.

“No,” she managed to choke out at last. “My apologies sir.” She stepped aside, but he didn’t move.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes! Yes, I--” She couldn’t be here anymore. It was getting too difficult. Tears burned her eyes, and she rushed out. To her relief, he didn’t follow.

* * *

She wept when he returned. He was different, she could see that right away. His hair was shorter, for a start. But his eyes were different too. He must have seen things that can’t be so easily unseen. She had left Tirnanoc long before the same could be said of her, but she had seen the same look in her neighbors and friends. The look that had seen friends and comrades ripped apart, thrown to the beasts and left to rot. But there was something else there, too. Something different from the rest. He had lost something.

He was kinder now. Not that he wasn't ever kind before. He took a job with the police force, working his way through the ranks. Aisling watched him when she could. Proud of the place he had come to. Sad, too. Refugees were still arriving at the shores, and tension between the Burgish and the Fae were at a near boiling point. It would only be a matter of time before he was forced to pick a side. Father or mother, she could only pray that it was on the side of the living. 

Still, she did not speak to him. Not until the nights grew dark, and the only thing she could whisper was her song. The one that never had grown in popularity, but was left for her to take her own meaning. 

She was at peace with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me @inertiaspider on tumblr


End file.
